annonymous internet surfing?

[Anthony]

hello everyone!

i am interested in SurfSolo, from Encryption Software, Anonymous Web Surfing, Computer Firewall

it is a like VPN but for personal use, has any of you tried it yet and if yes do you have any suggestions and opinions about it?

thanks!

[Jim]

This particular one is new to me. I see that it costs 80 euros for the software. Every one I've checked into usually have like a monthly fee as well. Does this have a recurring fee?

I think it's a great idea for security purposes. I know that anonymous servers are a boon to people like paedophiles and terrorists though. Problem is, I think they will always find a way around things anyway. I don't use my PC for anything illegal but I still don't want any government looking over my shoulder any more than I want them listening to my conversations at home.

Do you any file encryption by the way?

[Anthony]

hi Jim..

are you asking if i use file encryption? for that i use DriveCrypt, from the same company as SurfSolo...i am pleased with it.

i can assure you that my purposes for wanting annonymity have nothing do do with the character traits you mentioned

anyway thanks for your reply...and do you have any idea about SurfSolo? if yes, please tell me your thoughts.

cheers

[Jim]

Well I promise I wasn't insinuating those character traits have anything to do with you sir I assume, like me, you just don't want other people to be able to track you for privacy reasons or be able to follow your information trail to hack your PC.

Surfsolo sounds reasonable enough and, unlike most, I don't see that they have a monhly fee included. Have I read that right? Is it just the one-off purchase of the software and no fees? If so that's great. There are several similar schemes out there and most use the same basic system of encrypting from the PC all the way through to an anonymous decrypting server. It's a very effective system. The open internet only sees the connection back to their server and no further. A great idea but not cheap if you have a monthly fee.

For drive encryption I use the free program Truecrypt. From what I see it's very similar to your DriveCrypt including the ability to encrypt the whole drive on bootup. It's been extremely functional for me and can do almost anything I need. The only drawback I've found is that it can't create self-decrypting executable files. It is not really a file encryption as much as a drive encryption.

What you do generally is create a file (or volume) of a specified size and then mount it as a drive with storage space equalling the size specified upon creation. You can't change the file size once created. The volume can be any size but it must be mounted by Truecrypt and can't be opened without it though it has an option of creating a portable drive where the necessary truecrypt files are attached with it. This works for CDs, disks or mass storage devices like memory cards. A small volume can be created to send files inside of for emailing etc. No part of your encrypted data is on the hard drive. It's only stored in RAM or the file itself so if you suddenly lose power or shut down, the file is closed and can't be opened without mounting it again. Plus you can create hidden volumes within a volume transparantly. The password is the only difference between them. If someone were to force a password out of you then you can give them one to the volume without any sensitive data. Truecrypt can create a protected USB device as well as any drives or partitions on the system. For a free program I think it's a fantastic tool and if these idiot government agencies would use it they wouldn't be having this problem of lost laptops and disks. Anyone confiscating the storage devices would have a useless file that they can't open.

Once you close Truecrypt the volume appears as simply a file which can be copied, transferred or whatever the same as any file (and any extension may be used not just the default .tc) to make it hard to detect which files are ecrypted and which are normal files. And if you need more files the same size it's easy just to copy it, rename it, mount it and delete the files like clearing a disk. Then you have a new volume at hand in seconds.

I don't use Truecrypt daily but there are a few files I have containing personal data that I don't want a thief, visitors or the kids to have access to. Geez I sound like a Truecrypt salesman. Sorry but I had checked out a dozen other programs and none of them ever had the capability of this one and free as well.